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March 31, 2010

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Expect to here that phrase quite a bit from Mitt Romney in the months ahead. It's central to his explaining why his Massachusetts health care plan, like the new federal law, requires individuals to purchase insurance. And he's going to use it whenever he's asked about similarities and differences between the two approaches.

It may not be easy to convince a conservative base that believes the mandate is an encroachment on individual freedom, but Romney's case is that the requirement is actually fiscally conservative.

Speaking last night at Emory University in Atlanta, he made the pitch. It's worth noting that, when the same question came up on Monday in Iowa, he made no mention of the Scarlet M. And, for that matter, also note that he initially referred to it last night as an "incentive" before mouthing the M word.

“We passed in Massachusetts a health care bill that makes sure, that if you lose a job or change a job, you won’t lose your insurance. Everybody in Massachusetts is able to keep insurance throughout their life. It’s not taken away from them. So it’s portable.

“No. 2, you can’t be cancelled if you have a pre-existing condition or if you become ill once your insured. So everybody’s insured. Ninety-eight percent of the citizens in our state are insured. So in that respect, it’s very similar.

“And we also have an individual responsibility. We have an incentive — a mandate, if you will, to say we need everybody insured. The reason we did that was pretty simple. We had a lot of people showing up at the hospital without insurance — people who had the money or funds to buy insurance, who said, ‘I got no insurance. I’m real sick. Take care of me.’

“And the government was paying for those people. That’s what’s happening here, and in the other states in the country. There are people who — we call them free-riders — who say ‘I’m not going to be insured. I can’t pay my own way. If I have an accident or have a heart-attack, the government will pay for me.’ We say no more. You’ve got [the] responsibility, a personal responsibility, to get insured.

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No matter how Mitt spins it, it sounds like the healthcare bill just passed is the same as what Mitt passed in Mass. Mitt certainly made a good case last night as to why you have to have everyone be a part of the healthcare plan. The republicans were for healthcare reform before they were against it, and now are for it again. They want to take credit for what they voted against. I swear this party becomes more insane by the minute.

"No matter how Mitt spins it, it sounds like the healthcare bill just passed is the same as what Mitt passed in Mass." Well, that's because in many ways, it is. It gets its savings differently from the Romney plan--it has a LOT more cost control that the Romney plan (which didn't try to get savings, it just got money from the feds & raised the rest through new revenue). But in the way it spends its money and covers the uninsured, it's basically the Romney plan.

This just illustrates how the issues don't matter today. It's all about opposing what the other guy is doing even if you agree with it which is why nothing gets done. We have a health care overhaul that is ideologically very middle of the road that should have easily been a broad bipartisan success for the country. Instead it devolved somehow into an alleged communist takeover of all of our liberties and the beginning of the end of our country because both sides are more concerned with burying the other guy than getting anything done or being honest with voters. Its really disheartening.

Romney is toast now that he has allied himself with Obama on the "individual mandate'. I am surprised Massachuetts has not mandated everyone has to buy a Mercedes.
He would have been better off saying he realizes that the individual mandate was a mistake...maybe that the whole idea was flawed from the beginning/

Ok Romney,lets look at your plan.ER visits rose 17%,premiums(now Americas highest)rose 27%.Your plan cost 10xs what you said it would.Doctors left Mass in Mass #s,and your plan is a reason under you in good times, you had 0- next to nothing job growth.When every other state in America had some job growth.There is only one reason Mass is not bankrupt.A sympathetic federal gov that has helped by increasing medicare & medicade help.Deval was just recently in DC visiting Obama.Gee was he perhaps looking for a pre election state bailout?Romney you should just shut up about your states HC plan.If you stop talking about it Mitt, most people might overlook that issue in the primaries.

I really think health care is going to be to Romney what Iraq was to Hillary Clinton. Remember, it was Hillary's stance on Iraq that really gave Obama an opening. I think Romney's only real hope is that the furor over health care dies down by 2012, which I think given the silliness in the electorate these days, is certainly a possibility. But the irony for Romney is that if the furor over health care dies down, then Obama himself could potentially be in very good shape for re-election. It is hard to defeat a sitting president.

We already have a mandate -- to care for anyone who shows up at an emergency room -- no matter what it costs. Guess who pays, and at triple the cost of what it would be if these emergents had access to at least entry level health insurance coverage? The insured people pay for them -- and it is not a choice -- it's a mandate. MR is right about one thing if nothing else -- many hard working people do not have health insurance because they can't afford it.

Posted By: Costs paid by the insured goes up in direct proportion to the number of uninsured. | March 31, 2010 at 10:57 AM

Everything about Mitt Romney makes my stomach sick. Except the fact that hes going to run for president again, that makes me happy. Seriously if this guy is the best you have I could turn off my TV until november 2012 and won't loss a wink of sleep worrying about whose going to be president.

This guy is a pretzel and it's only 2010. What a joke of a candidate! The Republicans are better off running that old governor Barbour or that fool Mike Pence. At least they might keep the margin of defeat slightly under double digits. Hahahaha.

Thank you Romney for helping the uninformed and lazy ass teabaggers to understand why a mandate is essential to any healthcare plan based on private insurance and not public insurance. If you want to make sure that insurance companies accept the sickest in pools (folks with pre-existing conditions) you have to guarantee that the healthiest will not play the system, wait until they get sick to buy insurance. this is micro-economics 101, we call these folks free riders. This is why candidate obama when he became president obama came to realize that Hillary was right when she put a mandate in her plan. During the televised healthcare summit President Obama gave the same explanation to a mandate. As for the folks claiming that they don't want to use their earned money to subsidize the uninsured or the sickest i'll remind them that they do it already through emergency rooms

Posted By: Thank you Romney for helping the uninformed and lazy ass teabaggers to understand why a mandate is e | March 31, 2010 at 01:37 PM

What should we do with free riders? What should be done for those with pre-condition health issues? Should all people have health insurance? How should that be done? Is there a perfect system? Should we work to have health care for all? Who should be left out? Is it better to do something or nothing? Who should decide? Do we like the system we had previous to the new law on Health Care? Do we turn a blind eye? Who is answering these questions? Who is discussing these questions? I am not smart enough to know? Do you know? What is your plan? How would you do it? Any plans out there? I am looking for smart substance? The craziness of the debate is wearing.

In a perfect world, individuals would exercise personal responsibility to obtain health insurance -- or be on the hook for whatever costs they might incur if they got sick.

But in the US, we've passed laws that say no one can be turned away from an emergency room, regardless of whether they have insurance or the ability to pay.

Thus, the only way to prevent people (who are able but unwilling to purchase insurance) from gaming the system (or, in Mitt's words, being "free-riders") is to require everyone to purchase insurance. So, philosophically, I'm opposed to a government mandate to buy insurance, but practically, I understand why it's needed.

The mandates we should really be opposed to, however, are the mandates that states place on insurers to cover a wide range of benefits that most people do not want and do not need. Coverage mandates are what drive up the cost of insurance, when the goal should be to drive down the cost of insurance.

And that is one of the fundamental flaws of Obamacare -- the federal government will now determine what benefits must be covered, so we end up with one-size-fits-all health insurance. That is a sure recipe for fiscal disaster.

Desertdude, aren't you a little too obsessed with whether the President smokes the occasional cigarette in private or not? What business is it of yours? The country is faced with huge problems that the President is doing his best to solve, under tremendous pressures. Stop being so petty, you come across as totally ridiculous.

Flybynite at 02:39 PM -- now that everyone has to purchase health insurance (and the insurers are not allowed to "discriminate" against people for health risk factors), it is damn well my business that BHO smokes. His bad behavior will likely increase health costs shared by all.

this is what it means, if that's your new moniker, I could say the same thing about your being overweight or a rock climber or someone who engages in unsafe sex. I have the feeling we can eliminate sex of any kind, however, with all that frustration and ill-will you exude.

Get off Obamas back about smoking if anyone in the world is entitled to a little nicotine right now its him. Plus read the news all this morality based sin taxes that republicans are supposed to oppose have doubled the cost of cigarettes in 4 years and that revenue is holding up several states economies. Stop crying about smokers.

no do over at 04:41 PM -- obviously I understand why it is to the liberals' benefit to claim that Romneycare and Obamacare are "one in the same." There are, of course, rather major differences.

In the first place, Romneycare was passed in Massachusetts on a bipartisan basis without any parliamentary tricks or backroom bribes.

Romneycare didn't have to raise taxes to pay for itself.

Perhaps most important, Romneycare was implemented at a state level. Why should we expect every state's solution to be the same? Demographics (and politics) vary widely from state to state. Why do we have to accept the one-size-fits-all solution that is being rammed down our throats?

"on a bipartisan basis without any parliamentary tricks or backroom bribes. "

There were no parliamentary tricks. No idea what you mean by "backroom bribes". Do you have some secret deal that is substantiated?

Anyway, not relevant because it's not about the content of the bills. There's a concept in accounting that when you find a discrepancy you simply plug the hole if it is a smallish, immaterial amount. In the scheme of HCR, none of the "deals" amount to anything material. Further, this is the way Washington works. The Republicans were not interested in a bipartisan bill (even though the bill is in approach quite conservative) so the Democrats had to take a 60-vote strategy. The Republicans FORCED the deals since their votes were unavailable for comprehensive reform. This was their political calculation to deny Obama a major victory.

I don't see how you can fault Obama for not getting unavailable Republican votes.

"Romneycare didn't have to raise taxes to pay for itself. "

Um... yeah, so the fact that RomneyCare wasn't paid for is a selling point?

Get serious.

You conservatives and Romney are falling all over yourselves to find distinctions without a difference.
No one is buying your garbage, and this schtick is getting old, frankly.

But thanks ever so much to Romney for coming out, late, in favor of the personal responsibility mandate.

But if this phony had ANY integrity whatsoever he would have done that during the debate on HCR. Instead this political operator kept his silence as a strategic calculation. Is this the kind of character Republicans see as presidential? Really?

jhoger at 06:13 PM -- there is so much that is wrong with your post, I don't know where to begin.

The "parliamentary tricks" included circumventing the filibuster via reconciliation, and "deem and pass," even though the latter was so toxic even Pelosi had to back away from it.

The backroom bribes included the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, Gator Aid, and the boatload of earmarks for Stupak's concession. And those are just the ones we know about.

It is hilarious that you're arguing the Republicans forced the Dem leadership to bribe Democrats to pass the bill, because the Repubs (and a number of Dems) wanted no part of this monstrosity. The only thing bipartisan about this bill was opposition to it.

My point about Romneycare not raising taxes is that Massachusetts took existing funds from one program and put them toward health insurance.

Obamacare raises all kinds of new taxes, yet still has to rely on accounting gimmicks to keep the total 10-year cost under $1 trillion. And you think somehow I am the one who is not serious?

Finally, just the tiniest bit of research on your part would have found that Romney was on record, in favor of personal mandates to address the "free-rider" issue during the 2008 primaries. You remember, that was when BHO was campaigning against a mandate (because Hillary was for it). So you can stuff your lecture on "integrity."

Illinois bot cannot list two policy issues where he disagrees with Romney. Which proves his defense of Romney has nothing at all to do with issues -- because who agrees 100% with anything anyone else says? You can't, not if you're a free and independent thinker.

No, Illinois bot is clearly obsessed with electing Romney as an idea unto itself. What it takes to make it happen, and even what Romney does once elected, are entirely incidental.

Posted By: Illinois bot cannot list two policy issues where he disagrees with Romney. Which proves his defense | March 31, 2010 at 08:28 PM

This is unbelievable. I don't know what to say, watching Romney defenders using semantic games to defend his ever changing opinions. i don't know which existing funds were taken to paid for Romneycare since the state of MA is still scrambling today to pay for it. Can someone explain to me why socialism can be good on state level and not at a federal level? If it is Armageddon, then it shouldn't be good at all period.. Finally, Romney is on record during a debate in the 2008 primaries moderated by Charlie Gibson, not only defending a mandate with no distinction what so ever between state or federal level, worse he suggested in the same debate that his plan in MA can be a ground for a federal plan.

Posted By: This is unbelievable. I don't know what to say, watching Romney defenders using semantic games to de | March 31, 2010 at 08:38 PM

Hey, 08:28 PM, I wrote earlier today on this actual blog that I am philosophically opposed to the idea of a government mandate requiring individuals to purchase health insurance. So I disagree with Romney on that.

I also disagree with some of his environmental views (re global warming), but that's off topic. I would like to see Romney as president, because unlike the office's current occupant, Romney actually knows how to create jobs, and has made a payroll in the private sector.

08:38 PM, you're probably the same hump who posted 10 minutes earlier, so forgive me if I don't respond in detail. In Massachusetts, funds were redirected from paying for ER usage for the uninsured to getting insurance for the uninsured.

I cannot defend socialism at any level. The only good thing about doing it at the state level is everyone else (save BHO) can see that it doesn't work, and decide to do something else.

And thanks for agreeing with me that Romney has long been on record in favor of an individual mandate for purchasing health insurance. I don't agree with it, but neither has Romney flip-flopped (unlike BHO).